Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

Non-English book piles contest!

Member civitaspoints out that whatever language you’re on, the home page sports a pile of English books. As he put it, “The effect may be subtle, but why give a prospective new user something negative to think about, or to have a vague feeling about, before signing up …?”

We agree. So, a contest! Win a CueCat, or a LibraryThing t-shirt (plus everlasting fame and glory, of course).

What to do: Go to the list of language sites (there are 51 total) and choose which* to submit. We’ll also accept “Polyglot” submissions, to use as the default for any languages we don’t get entries for.

The photo:

Should show a stack of books in that language (probably ~10 books or so is optimal).

Light background

We should be able to read the titles clearly

Don’t include an e-reader (they look dated too fast)

Where to post it—do one of the following:

Post to Flickr with the tag “LTInternationalBookpile” (also tag them “LibraryThing“). If you make a new account it can take a few days for your photos to be publicly accessible, so post a URL to them in the comments here.

Upload the pictures to your LT profile (be sure to let me know they’re there by adding a comment to this post with your LT username).

If all else fails, email your submissions to me (jeremy@librarything.com).

Regardless of how you upload the images, please make sure to tell us what language you’re submitting for! LibraryThing employees are a linguistically talented lot** but labels will help.

All submissions must be received by Monday, 31 January at 6pm EST. Talk about ideas/submissions here.

What we’ll do: Once the entries are in, we’ll pick a winner for each language, and they’ll have their choice of a CueCat or a LibraryThing t-shirt (plus the aforementioned fame and glory). We’ll also pick an overall winner, who’ll win both a CueCat and a t-shirt, plus a membership upgrade or gift membership).

While you’re at it … This contests also offers us the perfect chance to remind people that translations for the various non-English sites are ongoing, and new contributors are always welcome! Anybody out there know Maori? Tim made the Maori translation in a fit of optimism during a talk in New Zealand. But it has yet to receive a single edit!

* You can submit bookpiles for more than one language. You can even win for more than one language. Tim’s standard fine print (“Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial”) applies. Any questions or clarifications, just ask.
** Tim’s done Hittite, Abby Russian and Chris Catalfo is fluent in Italian.

Is there a limit on the number of entries? I don’t plan on trying the CalTech thing of submitting every possible combinations of books, but I was wondering if it was okay to toss a few ideas out there, or if I needed to work hard to pick one of the batch. In any case, right now (which may change depending on future events and the answer to the above question):

I’d like to have one for the original or at least older forms of English (not American)–British, olde English, Canadian, Aussie and other Commonwealth countries. I’d have to find spine titles with Worcestershire, colour (oh–Colour of Blood by Brian Moore!), honour, and so on. It’s not so bad, but I just would like to see the diversity of English when software of the world is red-pencilling (we double our final consonants too) correct alternate spellings, such as Microsoft and all the social media sites (all my Brit-spelled words in this text are underlined).

You wanted an Italian submission so I’ve posted mine to my profile – http://www.librarything.com/pic/231462
I haven’t cataloged the books in Library Thing yet, but can do that this weekend if necessary.